'The woman doesn't know anything. Why don't you let her go?'

He shook his head again, taking me seriously. 'We will find out what she knows.'

I let it go at that and moved my feet around a bit, as he was doing, my hands behind me. The snouts of their guns moved, keeping me lined up. I wished I could help her get through the waiting, saying a word or two; but she wasn't meant to understand Arabic and if I spoke English again he might tell one of them to go for the face or the diaphragm to make sure I understood and that wouldn't do any good: I didn't think I could save her but it wouldn't make her less frightened if she saw how helpless I was.

I stopped moving about and leaned with my back against the little Fiat, listening to the faint sounds of traffic on the far side of the town where the highway linked the airport with the drilling camps. I couldn't hear the sound of any particular vehicle nearing. Hassan was listening too and I thought it probably wouldn't be long before he used the radio to ask his base where Ahmed was.

That was the principle of the thing, anyway: whatever they did to her, I wouldn't give them information. Whatever they did to me, I wouldn't talk. They could afford to work on her as far as the point where life ceased and the odd thing was that I was absolutely certain she'd hold out for as long as I did: it hadn't occurred to me that they'd get anything out of her. I could of course have been wrong but I didn't think I was.

She was watching me and glanced away but realized I'd seen her and looked at me again, one eye clear and amethyst, the other in deep shadow, the down on her face silvered in the light from the Citroen, her soft hair shining. One day she'd be a beautiful woman, would have been,yes, as you say, a beautiful woman, but there we are and I suppose there aren't many families without something to grieve for, it's Angela, really, who felt it the most, they were very close you know, terribly fond of each other, almost like twin sisters, but I mustn't go on like this the minute you arrive.

A query in the quiet regard: what's going to happen?

I don't know.

Cursed them again till the sweat came and I looked away from her because I ought to have reassured her but couldn't manage it, cursed them for bringing in a child just because the machine they'd set up was running too fast, sweating in the cool night air, not wanting to make the effort I would have to make and very soon. Not only her life involved, butterflies are pretty too, you find them flattened in window-jambs and the world goes whistling on, but my own life as well, not that I've ever thought of dying in bed, thank you. Two lives and a mission. Made you sweat.

Physical condition not up to standard: the bruising had left me wanting to keep still, every movement making it feel as though something was going to snap, a bone, a tendon. Mentally fed-up of course, the horror still there at the fringe of consciousness, their talons hooking and the farmyard stink of them, quite apart from the worry about what was going to happen. Put it this way, the organism wasn't in awfully good shape for survival.

'Hassan.'

I was still leaning against the side of the Fiat and I didn't straighten up when he came over to me. I was dead beat, he could see that. I said:

'The woman doesn't know anything.'

'You have said this, but we will see.'

'Let her go and I'll tell you everything I know.'

He laughed, just a quick flash of his teeth in the brown skin, and turned his head to look at Diane, the cigarette flattened between his fingers as he raised it and drew the smoke out, the glow of its tip reflected like a spark in his eye and then dying.

They would use a cigarette like this one. Probably one of those in the pack he'd pulled out just now. What is the longitude, what is the latitude, or she will not see anything again, the glowing tip against the amethyst, tell us. They would use other things; they would be selective, efficient.

'You will tell us everything you know,' he said, 'in any case.'

He'd laughed because I'd said something at last that he couldn't take seriously: if they let her go I'd tell them less, in the end, not more; and he knew that. Anyway the whole thing was academic because he was a professional and he knew that any man can be reduced to a gibbering loon if they take it far enough and it doesn't need more than an hour. The only drawback is that he might not be, at that stage, too articulate.

'You can't say I didn't try, Hassan.'

He turned to me, his teeth flashing again.

'You tried,' he said, nodding his dark head, 'yes.'

He dropped his cigarette end, putting his black pointed shoe on it, the loose sand gritting. Then he stood watching the roadway, listening.

The three men hadn't moved for minutes. Most of the time they watched me but turned their heads now and then to see what Hassan was doing, one of them staring at Diane until he saw me watching him, one of them looking sometimes along the road's perspective. Their sub-machine-guns had fallen away from the aim since Hassan had told me off for speaking in English but this was normal for the situation: they were standing at ease, in the military sense, to avoid the onset of syncope that sends our guardsmen toppling with such embarrassment at the Trooping of the Colours. Their guns could swing up and fire within a tenth of a second and at this range the shells would go through me and through both sides of the Fiat and there wasn't anything I could do about it: Hassan was running an efficient little cell and this trap was man-tight.

Near the end of the avenue a dome turned white and then darkened again as headlights swept across the building, and Hassan's thin dark body stiffened, straightening. We could hear the car but it wasn't coming in this direction and he relaxed after a while, shifting his feet and getting the packet of cigarettes, pulling one out.

'Don't worry, Hassan, he'll get here.'

He put the cigarette between his lips.

'Oh yes,' he nodded, 'he’ll get here.'

'Can I have one of those?'

He came over to me and I got some matches out, striking one for him. When he'd lit up he held the packet out to me and I took a cigarette, putting the tip between my lips and striking another match. It occurred to me, in one of those stray thoughts that pass through our minds at unlikely moments, that it wasn't a very easy death I was giving him.

17: MARAUDER

They were Unicorn Brand but that was all I knew about them. The important thing was that they were British made and therefore likely to have fewer duds among them than a Continental make, so that the odds against this kind of operation succeeding were considerably lower even though it was a strictly one-shot set-up without a hope of another go.

The oxygen carrier might have been anything, potassium chlorate, manganese dioxide or possibly lead oxide, with the usual sulphur for the flame-burst medium mixed with dextrin, powdered glass and so on for the binding and striking agents. The actual splint would have been treated with sodium silicate or ammonium phosphate as an impregnation against afterglow and although in this climate it was tinder dry I decided to throw directly into the fuel tank orifice while ignition was still in progress rather than wait for the flame to become established because the air rush could blow it out.

There was an area of danger during the actual setting-up of the operation. I had gone to lean against the Fiat instead of the Citroen GT because there wasn't a hinged panel over the petrol cap: a panel would have made a noise springing open and I would have had to stand slightly away from the bodywork to give it room, which would have exposed my hands and the panel itself. With nothing more than the half-turn cap to take off it had been a pushover even with my hands behind me and no one had seen what I was doing because finger movement alone was necessary, the forearm and wrist remaining perfectly still.